12 Tips from Greece
The article below, advice for Canadians abroad who earn a living from writing, is by Canadian-Greek Kathryn Lukey-Coutsocostas. For over two decades, she has reported on Greece’s local international community […]
Casting Himself on a Breeze
Interview with Marius Kociejowski
From Jig Street to London
I am neither exile nor émigré . I just happen to be in this place, and any interpretation I might put on it now is a combination of dubious […]
The Orenda
Joseph Boyden is a Canadian author (heritage part Anishnaabe, Irish and Scottish) who lives during the school year in New Orleans, where he teaches at the University of New Orleans, […]
Griot at Solstice
Marva Jackson Lord has been living in the UK for just over 17 years, drawn like so many others by love. The love is a Welsh Englishman named Stephen Lord; […]
Powning in London
I met Beth Powning at a literary lunch at the Canadian High Commission, which was held on the top floor, with fantastic views of Trafalgar Square and environs. Before the […]
British Rite
British Rite of Passage for Fathers One of the many good things about being married is that I read things I wouldn’t otherwise read. Such as the humorous book How […]
Imagine
At the Remembrance Day ceremony for Canada in Green Park, London, the High Commissioner, Gordon Campbell, asked everyone to imagine what it would have been like to be in the […]
Flight Paths
“How do you tell someone that a man fell out of the sky and onto your car, like a Pakistani David Bowie, and that you felt compelled to bring him […]
Spirits
Every December from 1963 for eighteen years, on Gaudy Night, while Master of Massey College, Robertson Davies told a ghost story. These he collected into a book called High Spirits […]
“Canada Election”
Every so often the British attitude to Canada makes me cringe – yes, it seems still a colony, even if Canada unexpectedly and occasionally burps up something good like a […]
National Poetry Day
Here in the UK it is National Poetry Day. What does that mean? First, the Forward Arts Foundation, the charity that co-ordinates the day’s events, defines it on their website: […]
Writer Two Kids
Michelle Smith’s piece on Devon appeared in CWA in July 2014. Author of the poetry book dear Hermes…, she and co-author Faye Hammill recently published the monograph Magazines, Travel, and […]
Carnival
Rawi Hage came to Canada (via New York City) from Lebanon, where his first novel, DeNiro’s Game, is set. Quite the debut it was, pulling in such prizes as the […]
The Writers’ Friend
Something I didn’t cover much in “Pay the Rent” was the role of the media, particularly the CBC, in writers’ lives – not just as an income supplement via journalism […]
Pay the Rent
In the Spring of 2015, the Writers Union of Canada surveyed 947 writers about their income, and in May released their report on their findings: Devaluing Creators, Endangering Creativity. The […]
Letter from Greece
Remember Demetra Angelis Foustanellas, author of Secrets in a Jewellery Box, resident on the Island of Samos? I contacted her recently about the economic crisis in Greece — unless you […]
Progress in Penang
I met Alison Gresik at our writing group in Ottawa. She was the exciting young writer whose first book, a collection of stories, Brick and Mortar, had been nominated for […]
Sisters
Rhonda Douglas is the author of Some Days I Think I Know Things: The Cassandra Poems (Signature Editions, 2008). Her collection of short stories, Welcome to the Circus (Freehand Books) […]
London Short Story
I was sitting at a table in the Waterstones Piccadilly lower cafe, sipping my water and watching people trickle in to the opening of the London Short Story Festival (18-21 […]
Saikaley Reviews Secrets
Review by Sonia Saikaley Secrets in a Jewellery Box by Demetra Angelis Foustanellas spans time and culture, shifting between the past and present. Foustanellas knows both worlds: she was born […]
A Kitchen Poem
Carla Lamont has kindly given permission to post one of the poems from her collection The Body Banquet. “I am Nigella Lawson” can be found on page three. I am […]
Mulling Over Food, Writing
At the end of April we (DM, husband, daughter) took a short holiday on the Isle of Mull in the Hebrides. As this trip would involve a flight, a car […]
Demetra on Samos
Demetra Angelis Foustanellas came late to writing. Born in 1957 in Ottawa to Greek immigrant parents — her mother from Samos and her father from Skopelos — she started writing […]
Naomi Guttman
Before leaving Canada for the United States, Naomi Guttman lived in Montreal, which is where we met sometime in the 1980s. (We both had work published in the anthology Celebrating […]
Jeremy Mercer
Up a narrow rutted road, surrounded by fields, and hills at a distance, sits a large farmhouse*, part of which is owned by a man who is so enthusiastic that […]
Soft Time
Jeremy Mercer is a Canadian author now living in France. To prepare you for CWA’s forthcoming interview with him, here are some quotations from his work. From Time Was Soft […]
The Bridge
For days before we left for France I was quietly humming “sur le pont d’Avignon l’on y danse, l’on y danse…” The jaunty tune reflected my hopes: I anticipated warmth […]
Susan Örnbratt
Susan Örnbratt (née Beck) was born in 1964 in London, Ontario, but met the other London when growing up, having visited the UK for family reasons (father from Ascot and […]
Ann-Marie
Actor and author Ann-Marie MacDonald was in London this week to promote her novel, just released here in England by Sceptre (out in September 2014 in Canada): Adult Onset. Briefly, […]
Adult Onset
Ann-Marie MacDonald‘s latest novel, Adult Onset, published in September 2014 in Canada, was launched this week in the UK by her publisher here, Sceptre, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton. […]
Depraved World: Review of Planet Lolita
Who better to review Charles Foran’s Planet Lolita than someone young, for whom Facebook is as familiar as the telephone book was to her parents’ (and Foran’s) generation? University of […]
English Winter
Wednesday noon the weather in London today is 5 degrees celcius and 83% humidity with a chance of rain at 10%, cloudy skies. According to the Met office, the weather […]
Rich Wives
In the National Portrait Gallery, in the room called Expansion and Empire, there is a small display: “Old Titles and New Money: American Heiresses and the British Aristocracy,” showing until […]
Colonial Moderns
Review of Modernist Voyages: Colonial Women Writers in London, 1890-1945 by Anna Snaith, Cambridge University Press 2014, 278 pp hardcover (ISBN: 9780521515450). Reviewed by Debra Martens. Modernism is loosely defined […]
Emily in England
Emily Carr was both artist and writer. Something I didn’t know: she took a writing course at Victoria College in the summer of 1934.* Bed-ridden by illness, she wrote towards […]
Emily in Dulwich
Coming out of the Emily Carr exhibition, “From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia,” at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, I heard the family behind me speculating […]
Get thee to a nunnery
CWA contributor Jane Christmas published her memoir, And Then There Were Nuns, in 2013. In the interval, I have been searching for the perfect reviewer. Found one. Both author and […]
Pascale Quiviger
Pascale Quiviger, from Montreal and author of several books and a young adult series, lived in Italy for ten years and now lives in Nottingham, the hotbed of creative writing in […]
Canadian Writers Abroad 